Question re: teachings re: glorified bodies

[jpek]

I recently ran across writing by Thomas Aquinas on glorified bodies in which he says that they will still be bodies and therefore will only be able to occupy one place at a time and won’t be able to share space with other bodies.

In my experience, being limited to 24 hours a day and one space at a time is a great source of pain, frustration and separation in this world – we’re always having to choose between beloved people/places/activities. If Heaven or the World to Come is really a perfected creation of joy, intimacy and healing, not only in relation to God, but also in relation to one another, I can only imagine it as a place where the current time/space restrictions are transcended. If they aren’t how will separation be healed?

Can anybody tell me what the church’s position is on this issue?

 

[3DOCTORS]

I’m not an expert by any means, but some of the Saints could bilocate - Padre Pio comes to mind. So maybe Aquinas was guessing but mistaken?

 

[GEddie]

THA while a premier philosopher, was not pope, and so not infallible.

Since the human pneumatikon soma, being eternal, transcends time, I’d say that space is also transcended. Space, after all, is related to time by speed.

Bilocation would seem to suggest that even the standard-issue human soma, can at the will of God, overcome space. I’d say that our pneumatikon soma would be capable of much more.

Happy Holidays and ICXC NIKA!

 

[bmullins]

I don’t know for sure, but it seems to me Aquinas was indicating that we will still remain wholly individuals and not ‘absorbed’ back into a common source (as some of the early arguments seemed to try and indicate.) Some people try to teach that when we die we don’t go to Heaven as us, but we go back to God. Kind of like we are just a glass of water poured out from a greater glass and in the end… we’ll just be part of the original mass as well.

I’ll have to go read more of this quote and see what it says in full context.

 

[3DOCTORS]

You mean like in pantheism?

 

[bmullins]

Right, the cosmic conscience thing. That the ultimate reality is just one conscience, and that when we die we all go back and become ‘one’ conscience, not individuals. Where as Aquinas reaffirms that when we go to Heaven we will not be the same person, the same entity, just one thing… but separate people with distinct individuality.

BTW do you have an exact quote so I can go read it? I’m trying to find it and not having any luck.

 

[jpek]

Here’s the section on the “subtlety” and other properties of the glorified bodies: newadvent.org/summa/5083.htm#article4. I must admit that I find this extremely dense reading and there is some vocabulary I don’t understand, so perhaps I’m not interpreting his meaning correctly.